Kelsey's Closet giveaway #1: Rain Tees
To celebrate the release of the new updated and revised edition of Where Am I Wearing? I’m celebrating apparel companies that are making a difference. Each day for the next two weeks I’ll highlight a company and then giveaway an item of theirs at 7PM. To enter, leave a comment in that day’s blog post or on the corresponding Facebook post. Winner will be randomly selected. I’m adding each of these companies to my virtual Kelsey’s Closet.
Leave a comment to be entered to win a Rain Tee
If you hate rain forests and kids’ drawings, stop reading. Otherwise you’ll love Rain Tees.
Rain Tees donates school supplies to children living in endangered rainforests and asks them to document what they see. They draw things like the one below. 
As described on the Rain Tees site…
Sadly, as shown in “Tree of Life” (right), drawn by 11-year-old
Mariela of Peru, we see a tree crying leaves and fish laying
dead in a stream due to oil drilling and agricultural pollution.People in Amazon villages like Mariella’s often die of disease
as their food supplies become polluted and the endangered
wildlife around them slowly die off.Other children in countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, and
Costa Rica show us similar scenarios in their drawings.
No, Debbie Downer, I don’t think you can get that picture on a T-shirt to wear to your nephew’s birthday party.
“Happy Birthday Stevie!”
“Aunt Debbie, what’s on your shirt?”
“Oh just the tree of life weeping leaves at all of the animals that will die because your mother isn’t recycling the paper birthday plates.”
But seriously, images like this are what Rain Tees seeks to eliminate. How depressing is that given a blank piece of paper Mariella in Peru drew that?
Typically a child draws a picture of something like a toucan. Rain Tees takes that picture and puts it on an organic T-shirt using environmentally friendly inks. A family that lives just outside a rainforest in Peru makes the shirts. (correction: Rain Tees were originally made in Peru but are now made in USA.) The child’s name and where they are from are also printed on the Made in USA shirt. For every shirt sold, Rain Tees plants a new tree in the rainforest.
How’s that for a shirt with a story? Pretty awesome!
Beth Doane, the founder of Rain Tees, has been mobilizing kids to fight for rainforests since grade school. When she was eight, she convinced her classmates to donate their lunch money to save the Amazon rainforest. That got her sent to the principal’s office. Now she travels the world giving, educating, and connecting.
Her stories from the front lines of the Ecuador/Chevron lawsuit are heartbreaking and inspiring. I’ve known Beth for a few years and she constantly inspires me. Watch her recent TEDx talk below and be inspired too.
Let your voice be heard!